


Stranger Without Shame

by Dinosauntor



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Blacksmith Kara Danvers, F/F, Graceling by Kristin Cashore is the closest, Lesbians in the time of Camelot, Queen Lena Luthor, and maybe an assassination or two, emotional angst, is my brand, lots of betrayal, lots of haughty Lena, plain-spoken Kara telling it how it is, sapphic fantasy, so many fantasy fandoms i can't even call this an AU, we all hate William but not Staz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25407538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dinosauntor/pseuds/Dinosauntor
Summary: “He could have drowned!” Lena bursts out, but there's no weight behind it.“He's a good swimmer.”“You're such a bully, Kara,” he moans, ruffling his wet hair until it stands up in spikes. “Embarrassing me in front of the pretty lady.”“Yes, right. I'm sure you had such a good standing with her previous to this, considering you basically stole her drink.”“I asked first! She gave it to me!”Both heads turn towards Lena for the first time and she blinks like a startled deer under the attention. “I did,” she admits.“Well, she is a remarkably pretty lady,” the woman, Kara, says without pause, then sticks out her hand. “Kara, blacksmith, friend of horses,” she says smoothly, smiling at Lena's hesitation. “And you're welcome for the rescue back there.”
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 5
Kudos: 139





	Stranger Without Shame

A large pile of papers thumps onto the desk in front of her and the woman sitting at it rubs a sleepy hand over her eyes, stifling her yawn.

“Today's orders, My Queen.”

With a rueful look, the young woman studies the stack that seems larger than yesterday's. “I don't suppose I could just go back to bed, Catherine?”

“Not a chance, Queen Leanna. The first is a missive from the North about the trading posts that were overrun in the uprisings.”

“What does King Thomas want now?” Rolling her eyes at her bedfellow and Lady's maid, Margaret, Lena conveys her displeasure by scraping the stone floor with the feet of her chair.

“He demands support,” her adviser says primly, not remarking on her bad habit of dragging the chair legs, “And reminds you that he stood with you when war threatened Camelot.”

“A war that never happened because I convinced all sides to hold back,” Lena counters, refusing to pick up the quill by her hand.

“Still. The promise of thousands of men is not easily forgotten.”

Raising the quill to sign, Lena's eyes dart across the page until one phrase in particular causes her to pause, her lips a tight line.

“And what exactly is the meaning of this?”

Knowing exactly what the young queen is referring to, Catherine runs a hand through her hair before answering.

“It's part of the support he's requesting.”

“My marrying his son will not get the trading posts built faster,” she says coldly, putting the quill back down. “I will not sign it.”

“Forgive me, My Queen. You know my thoughts on the matter, but it was suggested by your brother—”

“My brother?”

“He only meant well,” Catherine says sympathetically as Lena crumples the paper in disgust. “My Queen, perhaps you should wait before you—”

But Lena has already stormed away, her fist clenched around the missive.

* * *

Whispers of “Queen Leanna?” and “Are you alright?” follow her down the hall, as does her guard. When she comes upon the office of the Queen's Spymaster, she waves at them to wait outside and bursts through the doors, her eyes bright with anger.

“You went against my orders.”

The man sitting at a large wooden desk doesn't look up but he pauses, setting his quill to the side so it doesn't drip any ink.

“Good morning, Your Majesty. How are you?”

Huffing at the pointed pleasantries, Lena repeats herself, her voice harsh.

“Good morning. You went _against_ _my_ _orders_.”

With an annoyingly calm gaze, he stands and bows with practiced respect. “I thought them foolish,” he says plainly. “You are forgetting your duty to the kingdom.”

“And _you_ are forgetting that I am your queen. You do as I say, Leviticus. Not the other way around.” Her lips are set in a thin line, her arms crossed in a show of defiance that doesn't waver when his expression darkens.

The man, Leviticus, meets her glare with identical green eyes. Several years her senior and her older brother, he has the sharpest mind in the land and probably the lands beyond their imagination. When they were younger she had taken to shortening his name, calling him “Lex” before she could form the proper sounds, and to this day it's enough to soften his resolve if she says it with enough love.

There is no hint of that sibling love in the stares they train on each other.

“I am your Spymaster and your elder,” he says with a hint of anger, the ceremonial dagger at his side swinging with his gestures. “Take care that you do not burn this bridge. I have had enough with your headstrong whims, Lena. You need to procure an heir—”

“I don't need you telling me what to do. I know my duty,” she says the words haughtily but her face softens, the anger slipping from her features as she sighs. “We have spoken of this more times than I can count. You know my thoughts on the matter.”

“I do,” he says with sympathy, inviting her to take the empty chair next to his. “But you must understand, I put the good of the kingdom above all else. You may be the queen of Camelot but I am its guardian.”

With a shake of her head, she refuses the offer. They wait at a standstill, neither one willing to continue what will surely escalate into an argument. Thick as thieves, the Luthor siblings, until their father was assassinated by one of many people unhappy with his iron fist and way of ruling and now all they seem to do is argue.

The sound of a horn and the roar of a crowd makes itself known through the stone walls, drawing Lex's attention to the window.

The disruption breaks the tension and Lena's features relax slightly, one hand worrying at the rings on the other. Margaret slips in through the doors, sensing an opportunity.

“Your Majesty, allow me to bring you back to your chambers. You have yet to break your fast and there is much planning to do for the summer solstice celebration.”

“A celebration I have no desire to host,” Lena says in a tired voice.

“Camelot has held the summer solstice celebration for the last hundred years,” Catherine pipes up, having finally caught up to her. Lena grumbles in protest but finally lets herself be led from the room.

“And a good day to you, my queen,” her brother calls out as the door closes behind them.

They weave their way through the palace, barely paying any attention to the route they take. Having grown up inside its walls, there's no secret that Lena doesn't know about its passages and she trusts her instincts to bring her back to her room.

“Tell me, Margaret. Do you believe it is a woman's duty to bear children?”

With a smile at the ground, Margaret shakes her head, not taking the bait. “I believe it is a woman's duty to keep a family whole, Your Majesty. Your family is just a little bigger than most.”

“Yes,” Lena says with a rueful look. “Ten thousand children are quite a lot to watch over.”

“Closer to fifteen, really, and that's just within Camelot,” Catherine corrects, nodding at the guards to open the doors. “And,” she adds as they pass through, “it doesn't even begin to count the armies.”

“Thank you, Lady Catherine, for reminding me how easy my job is.” The sarcasm in Lena's voice just makes the ladies roll their eyes. When Margaret disappears in search of breakfast, the queen stares moodily out her window, glaring at the happy gathering beyond the palace.

It seems everyone but the queen is excited about the celebrations.

When the doors open, it isn't Margaret that steps in but another lady, one that has just recently joined the ranks of the Palace. Long brown hair tied back in a graceful swoop is the first thing Lena recognizes, then the face, as she wracks her brain for the newcomer's name.

“Good morning, Samantha.” Catherine spares her the trouble.

“Good morning, Lady Catherine. Your Majesty. Apologies, but Margaret was called away by Knight Sterling.” She curtsies awkwardly, trying to balance the large tray in her hands, and Lena frowns. Margaret has been sneaking off to see Sterling an awful lot lately.

“How long have you been with me, Samantha?” Selecting a single tart from the heaping tray, she holds it carefully to avoid crumbs. The last time she woke up to a mouse on her pillow she screamed so loudly the guards outside her chambers almost broke the doors down.

With a shy look at Lena's feet, the young woman answers her in a clear voice. “Almost six months, Your Majesty.”

Wanting to take out her frustrations at the day's turn, Lena bites her lip, an eyebrow raising. “Six months. You could have read the Bible, twice. Learned to ballroom dance, taught yourself a new language.”

“Perhaps. I'm not very talented,” Samantha says humbly, her eyes still on the floor.

“Then what have you been doing in your time here?”

Knowing that Lena is purposefully teasing, Catherine starts to open her mouth but a warning glance from the queen silences her and she settles back with an identical quirked brow.

“What have I...been doing?” Samantha swallows, unsure of how to answer. She was brought up in one of the poorest towns in Camelot, only here by a mixture of luck and desperate pleading.

“Well? Are you going to answer me?”

Snapping back from some private memory, Samantha blinks and tries to remember what was asked of her. “I have learned to play the lute,” she supplies, setting the tray down. “Some readings on alchemy and a few classes on singing. Along with everything I can do for Your Majesty.”

“All that,” Lena smirks, “you learned all that and yet you still haven't learned that you don't need to curtsy. Not unless formal occasion calls for it,” she adds when Catherine lets out a huff behind her.

Samantha turns beet red and looks as though she's about to curtsy again when a knock comes at the door. “Excuse me,” she squeaks, fleeing the room, her gown trailing after her.

“An odd girl,” Catherine remarks as the doors open, “but none here object to her. You really can be cruel when you're in a mood.”

“So I've been told,” Lena murmurs, her blank expression hardening into one of annoyance at the sight of the woman standing behind Margaret in her doorway. As Margaret walks past her, her mother stares at her with an unreadable expression.

“Good morning, Lady Queen.”

“I've told you to call me mother, Leanna.” Lillian Luthor stands in an elegant, dark blue dress, her hair held up with a bleached bone clip.

“And I've told you not to bother me in my chambers, _mother._ ” This last word makes Lillian's eye twitch but she smiles cordially, giving Catherine a respectful nod.

“Your Commander has returned from Riften, in the East. She says that things are much how they were last year, with no clear ruler and constant crime—they were attacked on their way back and she is injured.”

“Injured? Alexandra?” Lena's eyebrows knit, confusion clouding her eyes. “Alexandra is a hard woman to injure, I am surprised to hear this. I will come by shortly.”

“There is also the matter of the jousting competition. You must attend the ball with the champion, as you well know.”

“I will attend the ball on my own or not at all.”

“I suspected as much.” Lillian nods but doesn't leave and the queen sighs, frowning.

“Anything else?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Lillian says, her eye twitching on the last word. “A message has just arrived from the South.”

“Well? Go on,” Lena prompts when she hesitates, her eyes shifting to Margaret and back. “Maggie is hardly about to sell the nation's secrets,” she consoles, though the reminder that _anyone can betray you_ flickers in the back of her mind.

“They say that should you raise the property tax in Falkreath, as you proposed earlier this year, they will refuse to pay it.”

“And did you tell them what would happen if they did?”

“It was made abundantly clear,” Lillian says dryly, folding a piece of parchment and storing it somewhere on her person. “It seems they are prepared to fight back. I suggest we send our forces to stamp out whatever possible coup may be coming, but not to worry too much about it. It's just Falkreath, after all,” she adds as an afterthought. “A hundred should do it.”

Lena is just about to nod and wave her away when something pricks the base of her brain. Something about laws being harsh and people dying to oppose them.

Something that Lex said, weeks ago, about how brute force is not always the solution. It was her father's way of doing things but it did not have to be hers.

And it's the thought of another uprising clashing with the cleverness in her brother's eyes that gives her pause.

“No.” She surprises them all, then sets down her untouched tart and walks back to the window. “Send a convoy of thirty men or so with a ridiculously large offering. Tell them—tell them that if they can maintain the old tax price, I will allow it for now. But they cannot refuse to pay as they have done in the past.”

Lillian Luthor's jaw almost hits the floor at the sudden display of altruism. Though she doesn't exercise her power in quite the same way, Lena is Lionel Luthor's daughter through and through, and she sees the world in black and white.

You were either good or bad. Wrong or right. She stood firmly in the light, an avenging angel to redeem her family's legacy after the disastrous rule of her father, but she had no mercy for those who wronged her.

She had never taken a consort, never allowed herself to be courted, and there were rumors that when she was born her mother had an alchemist turn her heart to stone.

Having seen how her daughter acted at dinners meant to gain the young queen a husband, she even agreed with a few of the whispers.

“Are you sure, Your Majesty?” She looks so surprised Lena might chuckle, if the worlds didn't carry the undertone of questioning her sanity. If her brown eyes didn't darken at the thought that her daughter was losing her edge.

 _No, I'm not,_ she thinks.

“Send fifty,” she amends, straightening her spine and pushing past her mother's still-startled frame. “And _mother_ ,” she adds, halfway out the door.

Lillian looks up, already planning the journey.

“If they don't agree to the terms...” The end of her sentence trails off until the older woman forces her to finish it.

“Yes?”

Green eyes flash as she exits the room, not looking back as she gives her orders.

_Stand by your word. Don't show any weakness. Kindness is not weakness and you mustn't confuse the two._

“Kill them all.”

* * *

“This silly celebration is taxing my last nerve,” Lena complains as she dries herself from the evening's bath. “Send Margaret in,” she waves at Samantha, turning away from the cleaning maid as she slips into her nightgown.

“Just checking the room one last time, Your Majesty.”

When Margaret enters, the exhaustion of the day settles on Lena's shoulders and she pats the mattress, where custom dictates a lady sleeps in the bed beside her.

Harder to kill two people in a single instant, she supposes.

“Samantha does a most thorough job checking my room for poisons,” she comments as the mattress sags under their combined weight. “I should be surprised if a single ant remains when she is done.”

“She is simply trying to keep you safe, My Lady,” Margaret says good-naturedly, brushing through Lena's long, dark hair and tying it back.

“Isn't that what those jousters are fighting for? The _privilege_ of keeping me safe?” Lena's teases with a hint of bitterness. The knights have been jousting for two days and though she's glad for the distraction from the uprisings, it only distracts her people—not her. She also knows the instant one of them is declared champion, the people will be pressuring her to marry him, and stuck between the choice of Prince William and some farm-grown knight, she'd rather dash her brains against the castle walls.

“That, and the fact that your hand would mean the force of your armies behind it,” Margaret quips as Lena's hands fidget in her lap. “They are a little better than puppets, they are politicians with pea-sized brains.”

“Empty heads or useless bodies, I see no difference.”

When they've settled in bed, Lena turns to her bedfellow, her face pale and naked in the moonlight.

“Maggie,” she whispers, her hands pillowing underneath her head. “Do you think I should marry the knight that wins?”

Turning on her back, Margaret laughs quietly. “Why? Did another already catch your eye?”

At that, Lena is silent, and Maggie sighs.

“You know what your duty is. It will be easier for all if you accept it,” she says softly, her eyes closing as she yawns. “Perhaps you may even grow to love him once all is done, though I doubt it,” she adds with a knowing look, “but think of these things tomorrow. You need rest.”

With a weary sigh, Lena turns on her side and tries to slow her breathing. She's learned to balance the power and the name, the fact that some people will forever be afraid of her, the fact that some people will forever detest her. But the idea that she could be forced into marriage, forced to carry a child? She isn't against marriage, or children for that matter, but the fact that it's treated as though carved in stone, as though she has no say in the matter— _that_ is what she hates.

That is what she finds too hard to bear, separate from uprisings and the threat of war and the daily labors of her duty.

She doesn't even realize she's fallen asleep until someone is shaking her and calling her name.

“Lena. Lena, wake up. Wake up!”

Someone has their hands on her shoulders and hair is sticking to her face. When she opens her eyes, it takes her a moment to realize she's covered in sweat, her chest heaving.

“It happened again,” Maggie says in a whisper. “The nightmares. You were muttering in your sleep, twitching and shaking frightfully.”

Taking the offered glass of water with a grateful hand, Lena tries to calm herself,

“I am sure it's just the stress of the last few days catching up with me,” she says weakly. Her hand shakes and Maggie clucks disapprovingly before helping her lie down.

“Would that you told your brother, I would sleep more soundly. He could help.”

“Leviticus? He'll just brew something to keep me asleep and that is not what I want,” Lena affirms with a frown. “I am lucky to have few and foggy memories of the terror—why should I want to be trapped in them any longer than I already am?”

“I just worry for you, Your Majesty.”

“I know you do, Margaret. Thank you.”

But even as Maggie falls back asleep and the sweat cools on her skin, Lena's mind is wide awake. She can't help it, there are too many things bothering her—the ball, the prospect of marriage, the rebellion of her people, the daily pile of orders that take hours to go through.

Her body moves of its own accord and she swings her legs out of bed in a smooth motion, silently taking a cloak from the dresser. It's a nondescript green traveling cloak with a hood that will cover her face and only at the last second does she slip a knife in her sleeve, hearing her brother berating her in her head.

_Can't be too careful._

One of the things she loves about Lex is that he understands her better than anyone. He would want her to take a guard, of course, but he also would know that once she decided to go she couldn't be stopped, and he would want her armed.

Walking over to a tapestry of horses that hangs on her eastern wall, she reaches behind it and presses one of the stone blocks. With a quiet grinding noise a segment of the wall slides back and she slips through, checking that Maggie still sleeping soundly before disappearing into the dark staircase.

* * *

Weaving her way through the streets of her city, Lena is struck by how alive they are. It's not particularly late but the sun has gone down, leaving the night air cool against her skin. The water of the harbor a mile to the east brings in the smell of the sea and she takes a deep breath, feeling free for the first time in her life.

Not wanting to give herself away, she pulls the hood tighter around her face and falls into step behind a small group of townspeople, some halfway to being sloshed if their volume is any indicator. A few blocks on a stray dog stops and begs her for food and she kicks herself for not bringing any gold with her, having to send him away with a few pats to the head.

 _Get a pet for the castle,_ she thinks, carrying on. Perhaps her prison would be less lonely with a furry friend.

The lights of a pub draw her in and she slips onto a chair by the bar, placing her sleeve over a few loose coins lying on the counter. As the barmaid curses the last patron for not tipping and asks her for her order, she realizes with a jolt she has no idea what things cost.

It's a hard blow to her pride; she owns and rules these lands but couldn't tell the price of a pint of beer from a butterfly.

“I'll have an ale,” she says in a harsh voice, plunking down her stolen money. The barmaid gives her an odd look then hands her back one of the larger coins, bringing her drink a few moments later. She gives her a nod and turns to watch the rest of the bar, sipping on the frothy drink.

Immediately the taste puts her off and she leaves it off in favor of watching the patrons. Two men by a glowing fireplace are singing a drinking song, their arms around each other's shoulders. One man is playing the lute rather badly, spilling beer over himself with every strum because he refuses to let go of the pint. To the side, a serving wench is flirting with another patron, laughing at his drunken jokes and accepting the gold he presses in her hand with fake surprise.

As her gaze sweeps along the walls, she starts at the sight of someone looking directly at her. A man in a hood, blue eyes gazing back at her evenly. It's unsettling but she chalks it up to the strangeness of it all—the bar, the feeling of people so close together, the sensation of actually meeting someone's eyes instead of them looking away in reverence or fear. She's just decided to leave the pub before she can draw any more unwelcome stares when a hand jogs her elbow.

“Are you going to drink that, mate?”

She turns, surprised to be addressed so casually. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, sorry! I only wondered if that pint was yours, miss, and if you planned on finishing it.”

A handsome man—handsome to her indifferent standards, anyhow—is smiling at her with grey-blue eyes and a head of thick brown hair, his shirt open farther than Lena's ever seen. She can see half his chest and muscles besides and she blinks, shrugging.

“You can have it if you like.”

“Thanks!” He sweeps it up without a second's hesitation, like he was expecting this answer, and within moments half the drink is down his throat.

“Excuse me,” a rough voice says on her other side and she turns to see a man tottering off the neighboring bar stool. “Is this jackal bothering you?”

“No,” she says curiously, eager to see the interaction. She should've known better, it turns out, but she's always had a hard time learning her lesson.

“You sure?” the other man insists.

The first man frowns, gulping down the last of the beer. “How about you stay out of it, mate?”

“Mate? I see a man who steals drinks, not a mate.”

With a dark expression, blue eyes stands, his hands in fists at his sides and Lena is suddenly regretting her decision to entertain the second man. He's much drunker than she realized and as he steps forward he shoves the man and chaos erupts.

Fists are flying and she's ducking, any training Alexandra has given her evaporating with the stench of beer and sweat. Someone's foot trods on the edge of her cloak and when she reaches down to yank it away, she loses her balance and is sent stumbling into the arms of another man.

“I'm so sorry, I—”

She freezes. It's the first pair of blue eyes she saw that night, the man watching her from across the bar. But the hood has fallen back and she's looking into the eyes of a young woman, long blonde hair cascading down her shoulders as she holds Lena up and yells something over the commotion.

“What?”

“Wait here!” the lady repeats, then she's gone, ducking under the flying fists. She emerges from the mass of people a minute later with someone in tow, her hand grasping the collar of the man with the open shirt. “Come on!”

She grabs Lena's wrist and she's so surprised at the contact that she follows her out the door and into the night without thinking, letting herself be dragged along until they come up to the harbor.

“Hello again, miss,” the man says, grinning, and Lena wrinkles her nose at the smell coming from his breath. “Nice to see you.”

“Mon, you're drunk,” the lady huffs. She's pulling him closer and closer to the edge of the harbor and even as Lena opens her mouth to shout a warning she gives him a shove, sending him splashing into the water.

He comes up with a gasp, sputtering indignantly, and Lena can't stop herself from joining the woman's laughter as he drags himself out of the water and flops onto the ground with a groan.

“He could have drowned!” Lena bursts out, but there's no weight behind it.

“He's a good swimmer.”

“You're such a bully, Kara,” he moans, ruffling his wet hair until it stands up in spikes. “Embarrassing me in front of the pretty lady.”

“Yes, right. I'm sure you had such a good standing with her previous to this, considering you basically stole her drink.”

“I asked first! She gave it to me!”

Both heads turn towards Lena for the first time and she blinks like a startled deer under the attention. “I did,” she admits, the breeze hitting her cheeks. The feeling makes her pause, because it means her hood has fallen and she freezes, waiting for them to start curtsying and pointing out the queen of Camelot standing in the middle of the street like a stall runner.

“Well, she is a remarkably pretty lady,” the woman, Kara, says without pause, then sticks out her hand. “Kara, blacksmith, friend of horses,” she says smoothly, smiling at Lena's hesitation. “And you're welcome for the rescue back there.”

Her worry at being recognized disappears at the look in Kara's eyes. Clearly, the woman has no idea who she is and there's still a chance to save face.

The relief at not being recognized is only matched by the annoyance that she _hasn't been recognized._

_Are there really people in Camelot that don't recognize me? How many are there?_

Drawing her hood up disdainfully, Lena ignores the hand, her pride bristling and her confidence rattled. “Do you think I'm some damsel in distress that needs a prince to rescue her?”

Kara snorts and pulls her hand away, narrowing her eyes. “Well, I don't look much like a price now, do I? I was just getting you out from the scrap my idiot cousin started. Get up, Mon-El.”

“Hello! That's me,” Mon says from the ground, waving happily.

“Alright,” Kara says with a roll of her eyes. “We better get you home. You could at least help me, for saving your life.” She directs this last part at Lena and the brunette steps back.

“You didn't save my life!” A second later Kara is raising an eyebrow with a smirk and she realizes the woman was joking with her.

The feeling is so strange that it fills her up with bubbles that burst in her chest and bring a smile to her face.

“Fine. Because you saved my life,” she acquiesces, helping Kara hoist up the drunk man. He's heavy, solid muscle, and she strains under the weight. Kara seems more than capable of handling him alone but she refuses to show the effort on her face, putting one foot in front of the other as they walk down the street. They enter a blacksmith's shop with a sign hanging outside that she can't read in the dark and Kara lights a lamp, leaving Lena alone with Mon-El's weight. It proves too much for her to hold up because when he promptly sits down, he drags her with him.

Kara bursts into laughter when she turns around and sees the two of them in a heap. “You really aren't much good at anything, are you?” she says, and Lena can't tell which one of them she's talking to. “Come on. Up to bed. Thanks for the help,” she calls over her shoulder as she leads him to the stairs. “I'll lock up after you've left.”

Lena doesn't leave. She can't explain it, maybe it's being truly alone for the first time in years, maybe it's the happy feeling Kara and Mon-El have given her, maybe it's no one knowing who she is, but she stands in the middle of the blacksmith's shop and listens to the footsteps overhead. She can hear Kara's laughter and annoyed directions and the splash of water, then a thud and a curse.

_Is this what regular people do? They get drunk at night and stumble home and do it all again?_

_They're so much happier than I am._

“Oh. You're still here,” Kara says, coming down the stairs alone. “I can walk you home if you like,” she offers with a shrug. Without her drunk cousin around her attitude tempers somewhat but her blue eyes are sharp and bright and they look at Lena with undisguised interest.

“No! No, thank you,” Lena blurts out, desperate to keep her identity hidden. “No, that's alright. I'll make my way, it really isn't far.”

Narrowing her eyes, Kara walks around a table and stands a few feet from Lena, searching her face for something.

“You don't talk like a townie. You talk all formal, like a royal.”

Licking her lips, Lena keeps her feet planted. “I grew up near the castle. I had tutors.”

“I had tutors, too,” Kara says evenly. “I don't sound like you.”

“My mother read to me when I was a child,” Lena lies. Lillian had never even tried to talk to her when she was younger, it was Lex who taught her to read and write, then the tutors came after.

After her father was assassinated, that is.

“The castle is not my home,” she says decisively. It's not an outright lie, at least, and she says it in a strong voice.

This seems enough to convince Kara, who smiles as though they were just telling jokes. “You're a good egg, I can tell.”

“You don't like the castle?” Lena asks quietly, afraid of the answer.

Kara's face darkens and the smile thins out to a line. “I grew up poor. We couldn't pay the tax, and when we could it left us with less than nothing,” she says with a hint of bitterness. “One day my father gets it in his head to steal a loaf of bread—there were four of us and we hadn't eaten in days.”

Lena is speechless. She had no idea that her people were starving, here in her own city. She thought it was relegated to the outermost regions and even then, only those with poor markets and no exports. She swallows past an uncomfortable lump in her throat and waits for Kara to continue, impending horror clear on her face.

“We were starving. Lillian Luthor had him put to death for trying to feed his family. I was fourteen. So no, I don't like the castle,” she finishes in a monotone. Her jaw works and Lena looks away to give her some privacy.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers. Kara doesn't look much older than she is and her heart breaks at the story. She remembers when she hadn't been of age yet and Lillian was her regent, and the thought strikes her that her mother probably executed hundreds of people in the same way while she sat idly by, too young to make decisions and too broken about her father's death to care.

Too naive to know what was happening outside the castle walls.

Kara clears her throat and swipes at her eyes then gives her a gruff nod. “Well, like I said. Thanks for the help.”

Still reeling from the woman's tale, Lena just stares back. “You're welcome.”

“You know, you don't seem like a damsel in distress,” Kara comments, leaning against a work table and crossing her arms. Muscles flex through the sun-kissed skin and Lena finds herself wondering if perhaps this blonde has more muscles than the average person because she's never seen them on another woman. It must be from hammering metal all day, working the forge and whatever else it is blacksmiths do.

“And you don't seem like a prince,” Lena retorts quietly, because it seems like the right thing to say. The only thing to say because to address the tragedy would make it worse, somehow. A strange tension hangs in the air, one that makes her nervous and excited and confused.

“Oh, I'm certainly not a prince,” Kara whispers, moving closer. She raises a hand and Lena is helpless to resist as it brushes back her hood, revealing her face in the light of the lamp. A small exhale from Kara makes her self-conscious but before she can think about it soft lips are on hers and blonde hair fills her vision.

She doesn't respond, doesn't move except to close her eyes and when Kara pulls away she gapes, her mouth slightly open as she gasps in a breath.

“I...”

And then she does the only thing that could make the situation worse. Turning away in a flurry, she bursts out of the shop and runs away.

The streetlights blur past her as she sprints for the castle, her pounding heart crashing in her chest and drowning out the years of lessons that are crumbling to pieces. She's careful to be quiet as she slips back to her rooms even as her head is spinning, fatigue only setting in when she lies down next to Maggie. The other woman mumbles “turnips” and continues to snore quietly and Lena takes her first full breath since leaving the shop.

Lips tingling, head awash with thoughts she doesn't quite know what to do with, Lena doesn't even notice as she slips into the first peaceful sleep she's had in weeks.

* * *

“Your Majesty, where is your head?”

Groaning with exhaustion, Lena forces her head up. She's been sneaking out the last two nights and they're taking their toll, with no new sightings of Kara or her cousin to speak of. “I'm sorry Catherine, please continue.”

With an offended air, her adviser continues repeating the numbers from that day's reports and Lena almost immediately loses interest.

_I kissed a woman._

_No, a woman kissed me._

_A woman kissed me and I liked it._

The last few days have passed in a blur. Everyone has to repeat things to her and still she doesn't listen, too caught up in her own thoughts to pay attention to trivial matters about the gardens or the stables. How can they matter when she has this question piercing her to her core?

“Send for my mother,” she says suddenly, sitting up straight.

“Your Majesty?”

“My mother. I want her here, now.”

With a sound of annoyance, Catherine disappears in search of Lillian, leaving Lena alone to organize her thoughts.

“Leanna.”

By the time Lillian Luthor appears in the doorway, Lena has worked herself up to the point where she can't recognize herself. She stands, the chair scraping the floor as she pushes it back, and squares her jaw.

“Hello, Lady Queen. I would like the records from the time of your regency,” she says in a commanding tone, ignoring the raised eyebrows this brings.

“You called me all the way here to ask me to find some decade-old scrolls? Is that not what your advisers are for?”

Anger burns in the back of her throat, coating her tongue, and she forces out the words with as much spite as she can.

“I don't want the official records. I'd like the records of all the people you slaughtered while I was too young to stop you.”

The silence that follows this statement sucks the air out of the room and Lena shivers despite the summer heat coming in the window.

“You do not know what you ask for, Leanna,” her mother says after a pause, and Lena bristles at her condescending tone.

“You do not even deny it!”

“Nothing to deny, My Queen,” Lillian says viciously. “You have always been headstrong, just like your father. Who told you, Leviticus?”

The idea that her brother knew, had known all along, hadn't even occurred to her. She hadn't even thought to ask him, only of obtaining the proof of Lillian's deeds.

“I don't understand,” Lena whispers, falling back into her chair, her hands clenching the armrests. “What are you saying?”

With a disdainful look, Lillian surveys her daughter. “No, you never understood. Your father did, and that was his downfall.”

She leaves her with this ominous statement, her footsteps echoing behind after long after she's gone.

* * *

Later that night Lena turns to Maggie, her head spinning. She starts to open her mouth then stops, afraid.

_What if Margaret knew as well? Am I just a puppet, a fool for them to laugh at and jeer at?_

The words catch in the back of her throat at last moment— _What do you know, who else was involved—_ and she hesitates.

“What is it, My Queen?” Maggie has known her far too long to not recognize when there's something on her mind and she swallows her fear.

“Have you ever...seen a woman, kissing another woman?” she asks instead, adjusting her pillows to hide the indecision on her face.

Maggie gives her an odd look and a returning question. “What's brought this on?”

“Nothing,” Lena says quickly, too quickly, and Maggie's eyebrows meet. “Only, I wondered...there have been Kings who enjoyed their guards more than their wives. I suppose that means there are—women who enjoy, perhaps, a lady's maid?”

“Of course there are,” Maggie says gently. “They aren't spoken of, mind you, but certainly they exist. A few of them in your own castle.”

“How do you know?” Lena asks, curious.

“I have my ways,” comes the cryptic response, Maggie's eyes bright in the moonlight.

“No, I mean, how do you know when—how can you tell if someone is infatuated with you?” Lena corrects her, asking the question before she loses her confidence. Emotions aren't easy for anyone in her family, have never been spoken of when not being disparaged. Her mother has instructed her for years that whomever she marries must benefit Camelot, and _“for God's sake, Leanna, don't go falling in love and ruining all my hard work.”_

It's only Lex who has tried to show her love, has given it when she was too afraid to ask for it and too young to know what she was missing.

“Infatuated?” Maggie echoes, breaking her out of the thoughts of her brother.

“Yes,” Lena confirms, staring at the ceiling. “They say it is easy to tell when a man loves a woman, but I am no man. And...and neither is she,” she blurts out, clapping her hand over her mouth and turning away from Maggie.

Minutes pass before she can work up the courage to turn back but Maggie's expression holds none of the disgusted horror she expected. Perhaps a hint of surprise, but only if she really searches for it.

“It's harder to know these things with women,” Maggie says with a smile, completely bypassing the judgmental questions Lena had been fearing she would ask. “Has she said anything that came across as forward?”

“Does Knight Sterling say forward things to you?” Lena questions, unwilling to bring up her embarrassing flight from a few nights before.

“Oh, Knight Sterling and I have...excellent communication.” Something in Maggie's tone makes her blush and she feels as though she's missing something. “I would only hope this lady has the same with you.”

Biting her lip, Lena lets the silence stretch to an uncomfortable length. “She does not know I am the queen,” she starts slowly, feeling the words roll off her tongue, strange and unfamiliar. “She does not know I am the queen and she kissed me like I was a man.”

Her quiet admission is drowned out in Maggie's elated cheer and she hushes her, shooting a look toward the door where armed guards stand just outside.

“That's as forward as you can get,” her lady's maid says excitedly. “What did you do?”

Lena's face falls and she looks away. “I...I ran away,” she says in a small voice that's full of shame, and she's surprised by the feeling of Maggie's hand on her shoulder.

“It's alright. Don't be ashamed,” the older woman says in an understanding tone. “These things are hidden in shadow and I can only imagine how it startled you.”

“But it didn't startle me,” Lena responds without thinking.

Maggie looks at her queen, noting the confusion in her eyes, and tries for an easy question. “What is she like?”

At this, Lena breaks into a small smile. “She is beautiful. Her eyes are like nothing I've ever seen before, and her face in the lamplight was as though an angel had come down from heaven. We were by the door of—”

She breaks off, afraid to give away Kara's identity, but Maggie doesn't seem to have noticed.

“I'm very happy for you. But you must be careful, My Queen. There are those that would have you killed if they knew. When sneaking around the castle, be careful.”

Brushing over the fact that Maggie is assuming it's someone who lives in the castle, she frowns. “I do not understand why. Perhaps I should pass a ruling—”

“No, it is too rash, too unprompted. I promise you we will find a way. For now,” Maggie grins, pulling the blankets higher, “you enjoy your lady. I'll help keep it a secret.”

Heaving a sigh of relief, Lena feels the weight around her heart lift under Maggie's accepting gaze. “Thank you, Margaret. You have no idea how much this means to me,” she says in a grateful voice. “Truly.”

Maggie gives her a long look as she closes her eyes. “I think I do,” she whispers to Lena, who is already asleep.

* * *

A week passes and the celebrations begin to draw to a close before Lena runs into Kara again. She's standing in a small crowd at the waterfront and when she recognizes the blue eyes shining in the moonlight she relaxes, the horrible news of the day releasing from her shoulders. The second their eyes meet Kara breaks off from the group.

“Hello there, pretty lady,” Kara says with a smirk. It's so self-righteous, like she knew Lena would come looking for her, that Lena fights the urge to smack it off her face.

She's right, Lena has been looking for her, but she wouldn't admit it in a million years.

“Hello,” she says, oddly formal.

“I haven't seen you around,” Kara adds, and Lena would think her tone was rueful if not for the smile on her face. “Busy with the solstice?”

A flash of panic sends Lena into a confused stammering but Kara gives her a funny look and reaches out a hand to steady her.

“You alright there? I only wondered if you were having fun with all the partying going on. It's the one time the castle sends out free mead and with all the attention on some stupid jousting we all get a little rowdy.”

With a sigh of relief, Lena nods. “Yes. It is a rather stupid competition, isn't it.”

“That's not what I asked,” Kara mutters, guiding Lena down an alley. “You sure you're alright there?”

Lena starts to nod then stops herself, her face crumbling in an uncharacteristic show of despair. “No, not really,” she admits, burying her face in her hands. The competition is close to ending and a knight is readying himself to take her to the ball. Two days prior Lex had stormed into her room followed by Lillian and they had managed to bully her into letting Prince William visit. He was to arrive in the next month and she didn't see a way out of it short of offending one of her most powerful allies—King Thomas was a sympathetic man, but a pragmatic one. He wanted the marriage as much as her advisers did, even Catherine.

And when she finally confronted him, he had only confused her further.

He'd said that he'd known but couldn't stop her either. That he had no idea Lena didn't know, that he suspected but was too afraid to ask. That he didn't want to worsen her already fragile state, because she had gone to such a dark place after their father's death that he was afraid of anything that would hurt her.

She didn't know if she believed him anymore, but she clung to the words like they would lead her out of the fog her life had recently become.

Haltingly, she explains bits and pieces of this to Kara and by the end, the blonde is frowning.

“So your brother wants you to marry some visiting cousin and you don't, is that right?”

Lena nods wordlessly, still hiding from Kara's prying gaze.

“And it sounds like he and your mom were in on some conspiracy against you, but you're not sure what for.”

“Yes.”

She can feel Kara's gaze like a burning ember and she looks up slowly, embarrassed at her loss of composure. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tell you all that, I just couldn't be alone with it and—”

“What's your job?”

“Pardon me?”

“What's your job? What do you do for a living?” Kara loops her arm through Lena and continues down the alley, her stride even and purposeful. Lena has to lengthen her steps to keep up but it's not hard with Kara's hand dragging her along.

“I read,” Lena says without thinking about it. She can't tell Kara the truth, can't tell her that she's the queen responsible for her father's death, and the guilt sinks to her stomach like a rock.

“Your _job,_ not your hobby,” Kara repeats slowly, as though she's drunk and stupid.

“Right. I—I work in a library,” Lena recovers quickly. It's a white lie. She spends most of her time hiding in the walls of books now, hiding from her mother, from her brother, from anyone that could want anything from her.

“Oh. I never have time to read,” Kara says with a cheery grin, then stops them. “Okay, up you go.”

“I—what?”

“Come on. Climb.” With a playful slap to her hip that makes Lena blush, Kara shoulders her onto a ladder and she finds herself ascending, rung by rung, onto the roof of the blacksmith's shop.

“You know,” Kara says with a huff as she lays out a blanket she had hidden on her person and thumps down next to Lena, “I never got your name.”

Lena blinks at her, lost for words. She hadn't even thought about it and now here is Kara asking for something that could identify her more than her face or her jewelry, which she divested herself of every night, or her signature.

Instead of answering, she lies back and stares at the moon until her eyes water. Kara senses her hesitation somehow and stretches out, propping her head up on an elbow.

“You're very secretive, aren't you,” the blonde says after a long silence.

“It's part of my charm,” Lena breathes, having a small crisis lying this close to Kara.

“It's working,” Kara grins, “though I guess I better keep some secrets of my own to keep the playing field even.”

The playing field is so laughably uneven, with Kara on the higher ground, that Lena has to swallow a hysterical laugh. She thinks of all the responsibilities she has and wonders if they'll ever be done, if she'll make a good queen or lead her kingdom to ruin just like her father, the worries and fears that plague her every waking moment.

But lying there, Kara's soft smile inches from her and the rest of the world fading into the background, Lena realizes that for the first time she isn't worried. No one is bothering her, no one cares who she is or where she is except for the woman in front of her and she returns her smile, feeling a hum in her chest when Kara puts a hand on her stomach.

She isn't sure who leans first but then they're kissing again and it's just as good as the first time, if not better. Kara isn't holding back anymore, there's no drunk Mon-El upstairs or rising sun threatening their time together and Lena's mind is completely empty of everything but Kara. Her smell, her hair, her hands, her taste.

Her lips burn on Lena's and when her tongue slides between her teeth, Lena lets out a low, guttural noise deep in her throat.

Rolling with practiced ease, Kara ends up straddling her and Lena lets out a giddy little laugh at the sight of Kara, framed against the sky, hands tying up her loose blonde curls.

“No,” she says in a throaty voice, her lips swollen. “Leave it down. I like it.”

And Kara instantly drops her hands and then her mouth is on Lena's and they don't speak for a while.

“You're beautiful,” Kara mumbles against her neck, teeth nipping along the tendon that strains against her skin. “Do you want me, pretty lady?”

She should stop this. She shouldn't let herself get caught up like this, not with the current situation she and Camelot are in. She should put her hand on Kara's chest and push her away and gasp out some pitiful excuse and run away like she did before.

But when her hand goes to Kara's chest, it balls the front of the loose shirt in a fist and pulls, and their bodies press together and she groans with pleasure.

“Yes.”

The town disappears after that. The ridge of the rooftop under the blanket and the smell of smoke and the sound of voices all shrink into nothingness, and all she can see is the moon and Kara, both of them burning her eyes so intensely she can't look at them directly but she can't look away.

It doesn't matter that Lillian is hiding things from her. It doesn't matter that her brother lied to her. It doesn't even matter that at any moment someone could look up and see the Queen of Camelot lying half-naked underneath the town blacksmith.

Let them see.

* * *

“Why am I getting reports that you're doing your duties with half a cock's brain?”

Glaring at her brother is harder when she's absolutely sleep-deprived but she gives it her best shot.

“Because no one can keep their nose out of my business, it seems,” she says tartly. “Why am I getting told off by someone who should be talking to his spies?”

Rubbing a hand over his brow, Lex sighs. “Lena,” he starts gently, a hint of condescension in his tone, “I just worry about you. You drift about, you've lost weight. What's going on?”

A part of her wants to confide in him, her only friend. But something holds her back, and instead she distracts him with another bone.

“I haven't been able to sleep,” she admits grudgingly. “Margaret told me to come see you a while ago but I was busy.”

“You mean you kept putting it off. Lena, you have to take care of yourself. I'll get you something to help you sleep.”

His eyes, identical to her own, are full of genuine concern and she gives in. “You're right. I'm sorry,” she huffs, stifling a yawn.

Giving her a small smirk, he stretches slowly, nodding to her clothes. “And maybe dress up before the council today? I know you're not looking for a husband but you don't need to wear _that.”_

“What's wrong with my nightgown?” Lena teases, fingering a worn sleeve. “I'm comfortable in it.”

“It's mother's job to make you uncomfortable,” Lex says with a hint of annoyance. “She's so...insatiable. No, that's no the right word.”

Raising an eyebrow, Lena joins in on the mocking, feeling very much like a younger version of herself, crouched under the library desk and playing word games with Lex. They would play games with synonyms, antonyms, ciphers, anything her brother could come up with to take her mind off the sadness.

“Insistent?”

“Annoying.”

“Exasperating.”

“Aggravating.”

“Pestilent.”

“Malodorous,” Lex says with an exaggerated flourish, prompting a small giggle from his sister. It softens his heart and he goes to embrace her, something they only do when there's no one else around.

“Don't let her hear you saying that. She'll dunk you in a bath until your ears are waterlogged.”

“Hmm. Remember when I got my dog to defecate on her bed?”

“Oh, god,” Lena laughs, pushing him away. “That was disgusting.”

“But worth it.”

“She made you empty the chamber pots for a week! And she cut his tongue out and left his body on your bed a few days later,” Lena recalls bitterly, reliving the moment she realized her mother wasn't all that she was supposed to be.The moment she realized that Lillian Luthor lashed out violently and without mercy, and there were no lines she wouldn't cross to get her way.

“Okay, so maybe not worth it. But you laughed when she came screaming out of her room, smelling like that.”

Rolling her eyes, Lena snorts, grateful for her brother's ability to lighten any mood. “I was a child. I laughed at anything.”

“Anything to do with poop.” Lex wriggles his eyebrows playfully and such a childish word coming from a grown man makes her laugh again.

“Anything you did made me laugh,” she says, the atmosphere growing heavy with emotion. “All you did was try to get me to laugh.”

“And you still didn't turn out to have a sense of humor.” His soft voice reminds her of Kara and she turns away, closing her eyes against the traitorous visions.

“I'll pay more attention to my work,” she says, heading for the door. “Just take care not to neglect your own.”

Watching his sister leave, Leviticus sits down and begins to write.

_If only she knew what I've sacrificed to get her her crown._

_If only she knew how much more I'm willing to sacrifice._

_Getting the dog onto my bed was easy. It was killing him that was the hard part._

* * *

She doesn't stop seeing Kara, wading her way through the days pretending she's not dead on her feet, her body and mind tired. Kara exhausts her physically and the trials of running a kingdom drain anything she has left, but she can't give up either one.

It's like a drug, like opium, her time with Kara. Each time she sneaks out she tells herself it will be the last and then Kara kisses her and she lights up from inside, burning brighter and brighter each time.

With Kara, there's no need for her to take control. Kara does all the thinking for the two of them, following Lena's occasional gasped direction and following it so perfectly that by the next time she doesn't have to say anything at all. Mon-El starts leaving the second she shows up and returning long after she's gone, presumably spending the night with some woman or other.

For the first time since her father's death, she feels true happiness.

One night, after Mon-El has given his teasing farewells and Kara has thrown something at his retreating head— “Leave before I bash your brains in with a hammer, Mon,” — they're lying on Kara's bed, completely naked, when Kara surprises her.

“I made you something,” she says suddenly, hopping out of bed. Lena only half-hears her, too busy watching her naked body make its way across the room and down the stairs to the forge. She can hear Kara rattling with a drawer and lies back, closing her eyes and enjoying the moment.

“I—you didn't fall asleep, did you?” The disappointment in Kara's voice is palpable and Lena's eyes snap open as she laughs, rolling onto her side.

“No, but you worked me over enough that I could sleep for days.”

“Good.” The grin in Kara's voice wakes her up and she sits, clutching the sheets to her chest.

Rolling her eyes, Kara walks over, hiding something behind her back. “I don't know why you do that. I've seen you naked, you know.”

With a fake haughtiness, Lena pulls the sheet higher and turns her head. “How dare you look upon my naked form, sir.”

That elicits a hearty laugh and Kara plops down onto the mattress. “I wouldn't dream of it, Your Majesty,” she teases, holding out the box.

Lena doesn't even see it. Those words coming from Kara's mouth, “Your Majesty”, turn the blood in her veins to ice. The fine line she's been walking is suddenly razor-sharp and cutting her to the bone and she can't bring herself to look at Kara, can't bring herself to laugh away what was meant to be a joke, and she knows what she has to do. She just wishes desperately she didn't have to do it.

“You make me so happy,” she starts, her voice breaking. “You know that, right?”

“I figured,” Kara answers, her grin still on her face. “Or you're very good at faking.”

“But sometimes what makes us happy isn't what's good for us,” Lena continues, unable to look Kara in the eye. The blonde shifts her weight away from Lena and she can feel the distance between them stretching farther and farther. “I don't think—”

“Just open your present, will you?” Kara says gently, and with a sad sense of understanding she places the box in Lena's hands when she doesn't reach for it. “Please?”

She makes the mistake of looking up. Because how could she ever say no to those eyes and that face and the peculiar way Kara seems to look into her very soul? How could she deny anything to the woman who has given her everything? So she opens it, her heart pounding against her ribs.

Nestled against white cloth is a small silver charm, a crescent moon and two stars held together by the finest circle of silver Lena has ever seen. A slender chain disappears under the cloth and even as she gasps at the intricacy Kara is lifting it up, fastening it around her neck.

“Kara, I...I can't take this.” she whispers, unable to tear her eyes away.

“You're not taking it, I'm giving it to you.”

“You don't understand what you're doing,” Lena says sadly, but it's a sadness that comes from knowing she can't leave. Knowing that no matter what, the only thing that could end what she has with Kara is Kara, and the blonde seems stubbornly determined to loop her in and hold her heart as hostage.

“I think I do,” Kara says with a chaste kiss. “I really think I do.”

“Kara, please,” she says a little wildly. “I _can't._ ”

“You can. Name one reason why not and I'll prove you wrong.”

Reaching deep inside her and already hating herself for it, she mumbles the one thing they never talk about. The one thing that Kara hates, that she can't always do what Lena can do so easily, what she does without ever telling Kara though the blonde always knows when they leave the bar or stop by a stall.

“It must have cost a fortune.”

It's a low blow and they both know it, but Kara takes it graciously, letting the words hang between them as she plays with Lena's hair. And when she looks up, the glint in her eye tells Lena that she knew exactly what she was trying to do and it didn't work, and Lena's heart sinks even further.

“It costs nothing to love someone. I love you, pretty lady. And nothing you say will change that, so no more talk of thinking tonight, alright?”

And Lena allows herself to lie back down, for Kara to wrap her arms around her in the familiar way that makes her heart feel whole, waiting for the sun to come up so she can slip away.

Kara is wrong. Love costs more than she has to give. It costs more than anything before ever has, in a way that nothing before ever has, but even as falls asleep she knows she'll pay until she has nothing left.

* * *

The day of the ball comes and Lena is miserable. Her mother won't talk to her unless it's about the ball or Prince William and her brother is busy with the uprisings in the East. Margaret hasn't been around much lately, making her feel even more alone, sometimes only arriving as Lena is getting ready for her evening bath. Her commander, Alexandra, refuses to speak to her unless it's through a messenger, and every second of every day Lena fights back the urge to scream.

“I'm going to have to do away with Knight Sterling it seems,” she comments as Maggie laces her into a corset. “He's stealing you away from me.”

“Alright,” the lady's maid says distractedly.

“I thought you fancied him?” Lena asks suspiciously, watching her maid's reaction carefully.

“Hm? Oh, yes. Fancy him. Sterling.” Maggie blushes furiously and Lena practically stamps her foot in frustration.

“I can tell you've been hiding something from me, Margaret. Out with it, or I'll look like a damned fool later. Or is that what you want?” Her voice goes up an octave, desperation showing through her carefully created facade. “Are you in league with my mother as well? Do I need to get my brother to question you—”

“Please, Your Majesty,” Maggie hurries to check the door and glances furtively around the room as though someone could be hiding. “You do not know what you speak of.”

“Then tell me before I lose my mind. I feel it's already half gone and I don't know if I can bear anymore.” Not for the first time that morning she wishes it was Kara with her instead of Maggie. Kara who slept in her bed to guard her, Kara who she woke up to.But the collision of Kara and her identity is yet another thing she cannot think of without wanting to scream so she pushes the fleeting fantasy away.

“You know of Knight Sterling's courting me,” Maggie starts carefully, guiding Lena to a chair.

“Yes.” Refusing to sit, she glares at her maid. “Everyone in the castle does.”

“Yes, yes. Everyone sees me disappearing with him, often to the army offices or his chambers. But who does he serve?'

“He serves me,” Lena snaps impatiently. “If you are trying to make me feel like a simpleton, Margaret, then you are succeeding to your own detriment.”

“I'm sorry,” Maggie apologizes. “I misspoke. Who does Knight Sterling report to? Whose side is he by, almost constantly?”

A long-lost conversation, whispered words across a pillow, slowly trickle back to Lena along with a hint of understanding.

“I...Alexandra. Alexandra is the commander of my army.”

Maggie's relieved smile is wide and nervous. “Yes. So you see, it is not the Knight Sterling that courts me but his commander.”

Blinking owlishly, Lena struggles to fit this knowledge with her perception of Maggie. She finds it quite easy but still needs to say it out loud, still needs to confirm it for herself. “So when you said there were ladies in my own castle...”

“I meant myself. And I suppose I meant Alex as well, but I never meant to deceive you. I just wanted to protect her and then you seemed so happy and you stopped mentioning your worries of love and women.”

“Happy!” Lena says incredulously, wringing her hands. “Do I seem happy to you? Forced to attend a ridiculous ball in a play orchestrated by my own mother, forced to leave the woman I love to hurtle towards what can only be a disastrous discovery of my identity? I may be deluded, Margaret, but surely not as much as you to think I am feeling anything but despair.”

Rubbing a soothing hand across Lena's shoulders, Maggie tries for a soothing tone. “Do not worry, all will be well,” she says, almost convincing the both of them. Her queen stands in front of her, falling apart at the seams, and she bites her lip before continuing, knowing the ice she treads is thing and already blue with water. “Perhaps I could speak to Alexandra about it.”

“Alexandra? Why? Do you know why she won't speak to me?” Lena frets, throwing a brush across the room with so much force that it cracks against the stone wall and falls to the ground in pieces.

Maggie nods reluctantly. “As a matter of fact, I do. She won't forgive you for forcing her to keep your secrets.”

“What are you talking about? That's absurd. She is the commander of my army, her very job is to keep my secrets.”

“Not this one,” Maggie says forlornly. “This one was never meant...it was only a matter of time, Your Majesty. Her loyalty is divided and she cannot bear seeing you without the painful reminder.”

“If you speak of intentions and meanings without explaining yourself one more time, I fear I will throw myself after that brush.”

“You'll do no such thing,” Maggie clucks her tongue. “You'll sit down and listen to what I have to say, and you won't lose your head.”

The desperate, imploring look that Lena turns on her fills her with pity.

“Help me understand, Margaret. My mind is brimming with things only my nightmares would wish true and my heart refuses to settle.”

Waiting until Lena is poised on the edge of the chair, Maggie takes a deep breath.

“Your lady in the town...she is Alexandra's sister.”

The queen's reaction is immediate. Lena's face blanches, her body going slack and slumping forward. Maggie already wishes she could take it back, rushing to catch her, and when she bends her head down she can hear Lena's frantic muttering, just one word over and over.

“Kara.”

A minute later the queen snaps to attention so abruptly that Maggie has to jump back to avoid knocking their heads.

“I must go to her. Now. I must break it off before—”

“Before what? My Queen, I advise you not to do anything rash, especially not before the ball.”

“Damn the ball! I will go to her and I will tell her—”

“What?” Maggie says almost harshly, talking back in a way she hasn't talked to Lena since they were children running in the gardens. “You will tell her that you are the queen? You will tell her that you signed her father's death warrant before you were old enough to drink? No, Your Majesty. You will tell her nothing, because your place as her lover does not rank above the one of sister.”

The fight droops from Lena's shoulders and she sags back, her head in her hands.

“I love her, Margaret,” she says in a deathly quiet voice. “I love her.”

Maggie heaves a sigh of relief. “I suspected as much. It's something, at least. If you allow me to tell Alexandra, it will save you a painful death at the end of her sword.”

Letting out a hysterical laugh, Lena raises her head. “Out of everyone who would want to kill me, she is the last one I would suspect.”

“Family comes first,” Maggie says bluntly.

“Not my family.”

“No. Not your family,” her maid says sadly, “but it is different, for you. It has been hard on her. I do not know when she pieced it together, exactly, her sister's tales of a raven-haired beauty that only showed up at night and your newly nocturnal lifestyle. But she suspects you are only toying with Kara's heart.”

The shock at hearing Kara's name come out of anyone's mouth but her own, or Mon-El's, takes her breath away. “You told her I leave the castle? How could you?”

With an embarrassed smile, Maggie shuffles her feet and looks down. “You are not nearly as quiet as you think, Your Majesty. And you do not always succeed in washing before returning. And,” she adds with conviction, “I love her.”

Learning that not only Margaret but Alexandra—Kara's sister!—have known all along about her nightly forages is yet another punch to her guy but she forces herself to think rationally.

“I must see her,” she repeats, this time with more confidence, rising from the chair. “I will not tell her anything I shouldn't, I will leave that to Alexandra. But I must see her. I do not care, I will refuse Prince William and run off into the forest with her. She must know I love her above all else.”

“There are many things a queen must do,” Maggie says smartly, “one of which is attending the ball tonight with Knight James.”

“I can't be arsed to speak to him,” Lena growls. “You'll get me out of this ball if it kills you, Maggie.”

Thinking of Lillian and Catherine's wrath, Maggie wrinkles her nose. “It very may well kill me, Your Majesty.”

“Then consider your life given in an honorable cause,” Lena says dryly, already changing her clothes. “Tell them I am sick with my monthly consternation, kill a rabbit and stain the sheets if you have to. I am spending the day with the woman I love.”

* * *

Kara opens the door to frantic knocking, her face smudged with dust and sweat, to see an unexpected visitor standing in the street.

“Hey, pretty lady,” Kara says happily, her face lighting up. “What're you doing here so early in the day?”

Stepping into the shop with a confidence she doesn't feel, Lena returns the smile. “Am I not allowed to visit my lover when I have a free moment?”

Kara's smile, if possible, grows brighter and she lifts her shirt to wipe her face. “Thought you'd be busy buried in your books. Of course you can,” she grins. “You're even prettier in the sunlight.”

“Is your cousin at home?”

“Mon? He found some construction work a mile east. He won't be back until tonight.”

Thankful not to have to keep up a presentation for anyone but Kara, Lena takes a calming breath.

“Good. Remember when you told me about your father?” She starts without warning and Kara's face darkens as she looks at Lena more intensely.

“Yes.”

“I...I haven't been truthful with you. My parents...”

But even as she forms the words, she hears Maggie's voice telling her that it isn't her place, she thinks of Alexandra and the bond she has with Kara, so similar to the one she shares with Lex—two siblings, fatherless, forced to grow up too fast—and she can't bring herself to do it.

“My father died when I was young,” she confesses, her head dropping in shame.

Kara mistakes the shame for sadness and she steps forward, embracing Lena without a second thought. “I'm so sorry,” she rasps, tears in her eyes.

“He was killed when I was too young to really understand it. I was twelve and—a stranger decided he no longer deserved to live,” she chokes out. As horrible as King Lionel was to his people, he was just as good to his daughter. He doted on her, gave her anything she asked for, and she had never been allowed to properly grieve his death. “He was taken from me.”

“I understand.”

This time, when Kara leads her upstairs, she can't help it. She cries the entire time, finding solace in the feel of Kara's gentle touch even as it makes her cry all the harder, feeling as though she's being torn in two.

“Please don't leave me,” she breathes when their bodies have cooled off. “I couldn't bear it.”

“I think you've already borne a lot more than you should've,” Kara whispers, kissing her forehead. “Heaven damn me if I add to your sorrows.”

A fresh bout of tears springs to her eyes and she sobs as Kara kisses her, hiding her face in the space between Kara's neck and her shoulder, exhaustion taking over.

She doesn't know how long she sleeps for but when she blinks herself awake she can hear Kara hammering away downstairs and the ball beginning in the distance. The thought of her mother's reaction when she doesn't show makes her shiver but she curls in on herself, arms wrapped around her to keep herself from falling apart.

Kara finds her like that an hour later when she finishes with her work, and there's no hint of the unyielding muscles that were forging steel in her gentle touch. She slowly pries Lena's arms open with kisses and whispered words, replacing them with her own and crawling into bed with her, still dirty from her work.

“When my father died, my sister was the only one that kept me from losing my mind,” the blonde whispers, her hair tickling Lena's cheek.

“My brother did the same for me,” Lena says sadly. “My mother was...unavailable. It was nothing but business with her. But my brother, he saved me. I trust him with my life.”

With a sigh, Kara pulls her closer and kisses her shoulder. “I feel the same way about my sister. I never understood why she decided to go live in the castle, to serve the same crown that killed our father. She says the queen is a fair ruler, but I have heard the stories. I know what happens to people who oppose the law.”

“The law is made to be followed,” Lena says automatically, if not a little defensively.

“A bad law is no law,” Kara counters, pulling away. “And if it takes the lives of innocents, it was never meant to be followed.”

Instead of arguing, Lena just rolls over and presses a slow kiss to Kara's lips. When she leans back, Kara's eyes are open, clear blue and sad.

“I love you,” she says quietly. “No matter what happens. I love you.”

“I love you, pretty lady,” Kara whispers back. “Nothing's going to happen.” She knows her lover keeps secrets, knows her sister doesn't like that about her, but the things they've shared and the connection they have can't be denied. She didn't have a chance from the start, she was drawn in the moment their eyes met in the bar.

Those emerald green eyes that are swimming with tears and looking at her with the kind of desperation Kara has only seen in dying animals.

“Whatever it is, it will be alright,” she murmurs, wiping away Lena's tears. “I'll keep you safe. Don't worry.”

* * *

But Lena does worry. She worries so much she makes herself sick and she has to stay in bed for days, Maggie tending to her through all hours. She worries that she can't live without Kara, she worries that she'll have to, she worries that Prince William won't accept her refusal of his hand and will ruin everything.

The day he arrives starts out as usual, no indication that everything is about to fall apart.

“I think Alexandra is going to tell her sister soon,” Maggie says in a deceivingly casual tone one morning.

Lena says nothing, only nods. She hasn't been to see Kara in at least a week and she silently thanks Alex for giving in and doing what she doesn't have the courage to do.

_Perhaps it's for the best._

“I don't envy her that job.”

Murmuring in agreement, Lena lets Maggie dress her without a fuss, drawing a few concerned looks from the maid that she doesn't acknowledge. “When will she go to her?” she finally asks, her heart pounding in her chest.

“Within the hour,” comes Maggie's succinct response. “She must ready the guard to receive the prince and she had hoped to go after, but Kara is only free this morning.”

“Oh.” A pit forms in her stomach and she reaches out blindly, grabbing for something to steady her.

_Within the hour._

Within the hour she will have to decide her entire future. She will have to turn down a prince and maybe even start a war, and the part that renders her speechless isn't the astronomical consequences—it's her readiness to face them.

“Do you have my things ready?”

“Your runaway outlaw things or your ceremony things?” Maggie says without a hint of sarcasm.

“Either.”

“Everything is as you requested, My Queen.” Maggie's voice trembles and Lena turns to see her wiping away a tear.

“What is it, Margaret?”

Drawing herself up, Maggie sniffles quietly and she stares into the eyes of her queen. “It's only...I've known you for my entire life. I can't help but worry something terrible will happen to you.”

“Nothing is going to happen to me, Margaret. You needn't worry about me.”

A second later Lena's words are proven true; she wasn't the one Maggie needed to be worrying about.

“What is it?” she asks in surprise as the door flies open, the person behind it flinging it so violently it hits the wall.

“Your Majesty,” the knight gasps as three more guards file into the room, their faces drawn. “You must come with me immediately. The Lady Queen has been murdered.”

* * *

Lena has seen her fair share of blood.

She greets the knights when they come back to Camelot, haggard and sporting bloody bandages. She used to play in the kitchens and watch the butcher, and one time her father had even let her kill a chicken. It had unsettled her, the stream of blood that spurted from the neck of the dead animal, and she had turned away while her brother had drawn nearer.

They are exactly the same people twenty years later, it seems.

She arrives at her mother's chambers at the same time as her brother, their green eyes meeting with an unspoken message. With the guards on their heels, they step into the room together, Lex's hand in hers.

Her mother lies on the bed, blood soaking the front of her nightgown. From the looks of it, she was still sleeping when the murderer came upon her, but her open eyes that are glazed with death tell a different story.

She grips Lex's hand, desperate to cling to the only thing she can feel as her world swirls away and when she comes back to herself she's leaning against the wall of the room, Maggie holding back her hair as she heaves.

“Who found her?” her brother is asking, taking control of the situation. Thank god, because she's in no state to do anything useful.

“Her maid came in to wake her and screamed, and we rushed here soon after. It was only minutes ago.”

“But her body is cold.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“So she was killed earlier, hours ago, even.”

“I couldn't say, My Lord.”

Lex draws himself up, towering over the knight. It's an impressive feat, making such a large man in a suit of armor look small, but he succeeds, every bit the guardian angel Lena remembers.

“I want to know who was here. I want to know everything. I have already sent for my spies and if you say a single word that contradicts them, I will personally have you drawn and quartered,” he spits. “It was under your watch that both of my parents have been murdered, so it will be under mine that the same happens to you.”

Something inside Lena snaps and she loses her grip on reality. The idea that somehow, with an entire guard and a network of spies and a barricaded castle first her father, then her mother has been killed, seizes her last bit of sanity and tugs until it begins to tear. Someone begins to scream and she covers her ears with her hands, flinching away from the noise.

“Lex, please!” Reaching for her brother, her arms lock around his chest and she holds him like he's dying, her body shaking. “Please, I can't stand it, make it stop, make it stop!” she sobs, blubbering incoherently as he prises her away and holds her at arm's length.

“Lena,” he seems to be saying, but she can't hear him over the roar in her ears and she can't see him through her tears.

“Make it stop!” she howls, stretching out an arm towards her mother's corpse. “Fix it! Fix it, fix it now!”

The guards look stricken, unsure of what to do, and Lex sends them away with a glare. Margaret stays, her hands on Lena's shoulders, her hair, her back, trying to give her some comfort, but her grief is swallowing her whole.

“Mother! Mother, get up!” She's screaming now, barely aware of either of them, her pain and anguish coming out as anger. “Get up, you old, useless, horrible—”

Lunging for the bed, she latches on to her mother's sleeve before Lex can grab her, dragging it across the sheets and off the bed as he struggles to pull her away, trying to be heard over her shrill screams.

“Lena! Lena, get a hold of yourself. You need to lie down,” he's saying in a loud, even voice, but she can't tear her eyes away. With a horrible _thump_ Lillian Luthor's corpse hits the floor and Lena stares, uncomprehendingly, at the gaping, bloody mouth of her mother.

She hears Lex shout her name once, twice, then the ground comes up to meet her and her world goes black.

* * *

“My Queen.”

A hushed voice at her side makes her open her eyes, and she winces as she sits up.

“Kara?” she mumbles before she can get a grip on reality.

“It's Maggie,” the voice whispers. It isn't quiet, as she first thought, but hushed with fear.

“Maggie. Maggie—”

“I know. I know,” her maid says hurriedly, holding her down. “I'm so sorry.”

“I don't understand.” Her mind hasn't quite gotten ahold of the truth yet and she tries to voice it, tries to make it go away by saying it, but nothing comes out. “Oh, Margaret,” she says in a broken whisper, shutting her eyes against the memory of her mother's corpse, “how could I have let this happen?”

“Wasn't anything you could have done,” Maggie consoles her, catching her hand and holding fast. Then the door opens and her brother stands there, his father's robes on.

 _He looks like a king,_ Lena thinks deliriously, _if not for the bloodlust in his eyes._ Something nags at her but her mind is shattered, a million pieces of glass reflecting off of each other and mixing up her memories.

“Welcome back, sister,” Lex says with a grand gesture. “I dressed you in your wedding gown.”

Looking down, she sees the white lace for the first time and fights the urge to vomit. The idea of her brother seeing her naked turns her stomach and she squeezes her eyes shut, biting the inside of her cheek.

“I don't understand,” she says brokenly, feeling like a ship lost at sea. “I don't understand what is happening.”

“Mother is dead,” Lex says in an oddly nonchalant tone, “mother is dead and your prince is waiting out on the balcony. He arrived yesterday.”

“Yesterday?”

“You heard me. The priest is here, the people have been gathered. It's time for your wedding.”

She feels like the rug has been pulled out from under her and scrambles to make sense of it all.

“Lex,” she starts slowly, still holding Maggie's hand. “Our mother has just been killed. I cannot marry a man who has just arrived. We must find her killer.” Again, something feels wrong but the look in her brother's eyes pushes it away.

“I was promised quite a lot, so I'll be damned if you don't.”

“And what if I refuse?”

Lex grins wickedly at her feeble attempt to assert control and rubs his hands together. “Well, if you refuse, I'll kill your lover that town blacksmith you've been visiting every night. But I don't suppose she'll want to be your lover much longer.”

* * *

Every step onto the balcony makes her want to die. The more the sunlight hits her skin, the more she wishes she had taken Kara and run when she had the chance. Every cheer her people let out scrape her skin like a thousand tiny knives and she has to force the tears back.

By the time she's standing next to Prince William her throat is thick with tears and her eyes are sharp with pure hatred.

“I'm surprised you came,” he says amicably as she mounts the last step. “I had to bribe your brother with more than gold to get this arranged.”

“I'm surprised a bastard like you can stand under God's sun without bursting into flames,” she spits, snapping her mouth shut before she says something else.

_Kara. Kara. Kara._

Her heart hurts with every beat and she forces herself to stand there, thinking only of her lover.

Thinking of what will happen if she doesn't go through with this.

Thinking of what might still happen even if she does.

The prince takes her hand and she recoils from his touch but he holds on tightly, smiling through gritted teeth.

“You make a scene, I'll throw you off this balcony,” he hisses, waving to the people with his free hand.

“You think you can rule people who don't know you after killing their queen in broad daylight?” she hisses back, turning to face him.

“What do you care? You'll be dead.”

“Better than being tied to you.”

“I think you'll find it isn't...”

The rest of his sentence is washed away by the roaring in her ears. Just behind Prince William, behind the doors of another balcony, stands her brother.

And just behind him is Kara.

Everything goes up in smoke. The priest begins to speak and William is whispering things at her, but all she can see is Kara's face.

The look on the face that she loves.

Kara looks heartbroken. Her face is twisted in a way that Lena has never seen, never imagined, and it starts a fire burning in her heart that only worsens the pain.

As she watches, unable to do anything, she sees her brother turn and say something and it revolts her. Her brother was never meant to know about Kara, was never meant to stand next to her. They don't fit, like two puzzle pieces with jagged edges that will never match.

And yet there they stand, not a few feet between them.

Apparently Lex had one final blow, one final trick up his sleeve that even she couldn't fathomed in a million years.

Kara, her head in her hands, looks up at him and answers. Then she looks at Lena one last time with that horribly broken expression on her face, and even from this distance she can see something in the blue eyes shatter.

And Kara walks away.

* * *

Every day that passes is agony. Maggie has to drag her out of bed and even then she sits there like a dead thing as she dresses her, unwilling to put in the effort of living.

She doesn't think she has it in her anymore.

“I don't understand,” she says one day when Lady Catherine hands her the missives of the day. The adviser is always sympathetic, but as time passes it's clear that only she, Maggie, and Lex know what happened. Everyone else mourns her mother's death but believes she entered into an arranged marriage, and that doesn't even take the time out of people's day. Monarchs everywhere were unhappy with their arrangements. They got on with their lives.

“I'm sorry, Your Majesty. Lord William would like—”

“He is no lord,” Lena retorts, the first bit of fire returning to her gaze in weeks.

“He is your husband, and while not yet crowned king, he is a lord.”

“If I am queen than I say otherwise.”

Pursing her lips, Catherine just hands her another letter. “We are all grieved by the loss of the Lady Queen but you must carry on. For Camelot.”

There is no reason for Lena to carry on. She has lost everything in one fell swoop; her mother, her freedom, her lover, and the brother she thought she knew. The only one who will speak to her is Maggie, and even then Alexandra's fury at her queen shows through in the strain in her bedfellow's manner.

The only thing she has left is books and she reads from dawn to dusk, hunching by a candle when the sun goes down.

Her brother tries to get her to speak but she can't even look at him, can't begin to sort out her feelings for this man that was supposed to guard her heart, who betrayed her by selling her to the highest bidder even as their mother's body was warm in its grave.

And every night when she goes to close her eyes she relives of that horrible morning and her mother's chambers and the way her eyes stared emptily, accusingly, as though Lena were the one who killed her.

Her attempts to visit Kara are stymied at every turn, every corridor filled with guards barring her way. She sends letters every day for two weeks, each time returned with vulgar words until eventually they go unanswered. One day she smashes everything in her room, screaming until her brother comes and drags her away, his hands burning her like a brand.

She stops eating. She doesn't bother getting up anymore, though Maggie, bless her heart, forces her into her bath every night. She sleeps rarely and in fits, waking with screams more often than not, reaching for someone who isn't there.

She becomes a living corpse, a shadow of herself. One day she passes a mirror and wonders if she's turning into a ghost.

The thought morbidly pleases her.

_Maybe I can waste away._

_Do you really stay alive if you stop living?_

“My Queen, you're sick,” Maggie tuts one morning as Lena shivers under the blankets. Folding an extra blanket around her shaking frame, she rubs her arms to get the blood flowing.

“Leave it,” Lena says through chattering teeth.

“You have a fever—”

“I said leave it! Just leave me alone,” she snaps, turning away from Maggie. “Just leave me alone.”

Her maid gets up without a word and leaves the room. The moment the door closes Lena begins to cry, hot tears soaking her pillow and running down her face.

_I am nothing._

She awakens hours later to a soft knocking at her door and doesn't bother to respond, pulling the blanket higher over her body. She can't seem to get warm anymore, fever or not, and shuts her eyes tightly as if that will make the person at the door disappear.

“Your Majesty,” Maggie calls softly, walking over to the bed. “You have a visitor.”

“Send them away,” she replies hoarsely, not bringing her face out of the blankets. “I do not wish to see anyone.”

Setting her jaw, Maggie ignores the order and reaches for a glass of water with a determined air. “You will drink this and then you will get up.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“You will, or I'll have to knock some sense into you.”

Lena doesn't respond to this, the silence more concerning than the sharp retort Maggie was expecting.

“You're going to get up or I'm going to have to tell this nice lady here to go home, and it seems such a waste of the monumental effort to get her here.”

Underneath the blankets, Lena's heart stops beating.

“Hello, Your Majesty,” comes the quiet, familiar voice, unfamiliar words rolling off her tongue.

When Lena turns over Maggie has left the room. Kara stands in her place, a completely blank expression on her face.

“What are you doing here?” are the first words out of her mouth, and she hurries to take them back. “I am glad to see you.”

Kara stands very still, drinking in the sight of Lena. When an armed guard came banging on her door the day of the royal wedding, she knew something wasn't right but never in a million years could she have guessed who she was sleeping with.

She had been playing with fire without even knowing it, and Lena had let her burn on the coals.

Wrapping the blanket around her like a child, Lena sits up and waits for something to happen.

“I always wondered why you never told me your name,” the blonde stars in a thick voice. “How stupid do I feel now, huh?” Shaking her head, she makes a fist with her hand and slams it against the dresser. “Well-dressed lady, speaking so formally, I should have known.”

Lena flinches at the sound and holds the blanket tighter, knowing there's nothing she can say to make this right.

“So what was it? You wanted to get a taste of being poor, is that it? You got gored in your castle, surrounded by your jewels and your servants?”

The words hit her like a slap to the face and she swallows painfully, willing herself not to fall apart. She had been so desperate to see Kara but everything was happening all wrong and it was beyond her control.

“You have every right to be angry—”

“You're damn right I do! You lied to me, for weeks!”

“You knew I had secrets. We accepted that about each other,” Lena says lamely.

“I never lied to you. I told you things...things I've never told anyone,” Kara says bitterly, her eyes stinging with tears, “and you listened and then you went home to your castle and laughed at me, the poor little blacksmith without a family.”

“No!” Lena cries, leaping off the bed, but Kara steps away and she's met with empty air. “No, you have to believe me, I never meant—”

“I don't care what you meant,” Kara says harshly, her hands up to ward Lena off. “None of it was real, was it?” Her eyes are a horrible empty shade of blue, hollowed out and deadened by some unnameable feeling.

Lena feels her heart break at the look on Kara's face and her entire body revolts at the idea that Kara thinks she means nothing to her.

Kara means everything. Kara is all she has left, and she's about to lose her, too.

Barefoot, hunched over, tears spilling down her cheeks, Lena knows she's a pathetic sight.

“And now you're married to a prince,” Kara says venomously, her eyes sparkling with hate. “how proud your parents must be.”

The final blow sends her to her knees, the stone meeting her skin with cold, hard force.

“I hope he keeps your warm enough at night because I sure as hell won't be there to do it. I'm done.” Kara turns to leave and Lean grabs her hand, flinching when Kara yanks it away.

“Please, you have to believe me. There was—I had no choice in the matter.”

“Your choice was to tell me who you were the night we met. To tell me the truth before you held a public ceremony and married him in front of me,” Kara snaps, “and you made the wrong one. Even one as powerful as you must suffer the consequences of your actions, Your Majesty.”

Nothing could have prepared her for this, her title said to her with so much disdain from Kara's lips, and she stays on her knees and does something completely unfitting of a queen.

She begs.

“Please do not leave me.” Her voice is hoarse with emotion but she soldiers on, afraid to look up. “Please, I didn't want to—”

“Didn't want to what? Lie to me? Get married without telling me? Break my heart?” Kara's voice cracks on the last words, her anger starting to give way to the anguish in her heart.

“All of it. I had no say in the matter. I did not want to—”

“If you didn't want to, why do it?”

Lena falters, feeling the divide between them for the first time.

“Because I had to.”

“You are the queen of Camelot,” the blonde scoffs, but a hint of doubt shines through. “There is nothing you _have_ to do.”

“You don't understand, Kara.” Her pleading sounds fragile even to her own ears and it hurts even more that she's finally telling the truth. She's telling the truth and Kara won't believe her, won't even consider her with anything but anger because she's hurt her beyond repair.

“Then explain. Now.”

Seizing her chance, the words come rushing out, strung together with a desperate kind of wildness.

“I am not...I am a figurehead, a puppet to be used. They have controlled me for so long, manipulated me until I no longer recognize the person I've become. The marriage, it meant nothing, truly,” she repeats, her hands pressed against the floor to steady herself. “He threatened you. I had to do it, I had to, can't you see that?”

“All I see is that my queen is a liar and a traitor and she toyed with my heart like it was child's toy,” Kara says coldly. Her reserve is faltering with every second of Lena's pain, magnified a hundredfold by the fact that Lena is bowing to her, but she's so beyond hurt that it mutes her sympathy. “You should have told me the truth.”

“I couldn't! Oh, Kara, I couldn't,” Lena gasps, her heart threatening to burst out of her chest. “You were the one real thing I had left, the only time I truly felt free was when I was with you. And the more time that passed, the longer I wished it _was_ true, that I had been born in the town, that I could run away with you and be happy.”

“And look at the happiness you have brought us,” Kara says in an oddly formal tone, emotions warring on her face.

Lena shakes her head and closes her eyes, her head bowed. “It was impossible. I wanted nothing more than to be a part of your world, Kara. So I did everything in my power to stay close to you. And it was a mistake. Perhaps the worst mistake I have ever made.”

Her words are met with silence and when she looks up, Kara is watching her with a mix of pity and something unreadable that makes her uneasy.

“Why do you think our worlds are so different?”

A sad laugh escapes Lena's lips and she runs a hand through her hair, ripping out the tangles that have formed in the days she spent in bed. “You told me you hated the castle, that they killed your father. Something tells me your would always choose your world over mine.”

Kara doesn't answer and she closes her eyes, preparing herself for the moment the door closes behind the blacksmith.

The air by her head stirs and she holds her breath, her heart contracting painfully.

Kara crouches down by her queen, relieved to find that there is nothing left in her but forgiveness. Her own heart is beating with a painful rhythm but she knew from the moment Maggie approached her that she had no choice in the matter, same as Lena.

“Hey, pretty lady,” she whispers with a sad smile. “I love you.”

The hopeful look on Lena's face is as blinding as the sun and she takes her hands, pulling her up until they're both standing, Kara a good head taller than the queen.

“Where ever you are, that's my world,” she says simply, and Lena falls into her arms.

“Oh, Kara, “ she cries against her chest, “I thought you would hate me forever. I wrote so many letters and tried to visit you, but he stopped me—”

“I never got any letters,” Kara says with a confused look.

Her heart skips a beat. The only person with the power to control her missives is her brother, and the thought hits her like an arrow shot straight into her heart.

“We must go, now. We must run, before tonight, I—” The words spill out of her before she can stop herself. “We must leave Camelot,” she says, hysterical.

“Alright,” Kara says easily, “we'll go. But first, you need rest.”

Gasping, her fingers around Kara's arms clenching with bruising force, she shakes her head. “No! There's no time. Please, just trust me. He'll come after me, he'll hunt me down!”

Blinking at the turn of events, Kara tries to keep up. “Who? Who's after you?”

The thought that has been worrying at the back of her mind since the wedding comes slowly, then suddenly to light and her knees buckle. The ground drops away as Kara sweeps her up, carrying her across the room. Her arms flex under Lena's weight but when she goes to put her down on the bed, Lena clings to her.

“Don't go,” she pleads into the familiar smell of Kara's shirt, wrapping her legs around Kara's waist. “Don't leave me.”

“Alright, alright,” Kara says with a worried tone, her eyebrows knitting. “I won't go anywhere. Now please, will you explain what's going on?”

But Lena just buries her face in Kara's chest and wails, her heart breaking. She sobs and sobs until her body drains itself, leaving her a quivering mess in Kara's arms.

“I'm getting really worried,” Kara says in a small voice. “Can you speak?”

Pulling herself up, she meets Kara's clear blue eyes with her red-rimmed ones and tries to catch her breath, breaking down into fits of sobbing until someone forces the rim of a cup to her lips.

“She's—dead,” she hiccups, swallowing a mix of tears and mead. The alcohol bubbles down her throat and settles in her, bringing her back fractionally, just enough that she can speak.

“Who's dead? Do you mean your mother?”

“She's dead,” Lena repeats, her eyes emptying in a way that worries Kara all the way through. “He cut out her tongue! Oh god, he—”

“Who? What are you talking about? What's happened?” Kara says frantically. Maggie has appeared by her side and she fusses over them, tying back Lena's hair even as she bends over to retch onto the floor.

It's identical, the images in her mind. Lex's faithful dog, eyes open, legs splayed on the quilt, his mouth hanging open and dripping with blood. Someone had cut out his tongue and his mouth looked bizarre and empty without it, an awful, strangled scream frozen in death.

The same look that was on her mother's face when she found her. When Lex was with her and dragging her away before she could see too much, Lex, who was the only person besides her and Lillian who knew what had happened to that dog.

She meets Kara's eyes and can see her reflection in the blue orbs, panicked and shocked and not altogether present. As she opens her mouth to say the words, something falls into place and everything becomes horrifically, suddenly clear.

“My brother is the murderer.”

* * *

The banging on the door makes both their heads whip around. Maggie straightens up, squaring her shoulders, and kisses Lena on the forehead.

“I'll get it,” she says quietly, walking across the room and turning the corner around the dresser.

Lena has just opened her mouth to protest when the door swings open, but it's too late.

“Where is she?”

Her brother's voice sounds like a stranger to her ears.

“Lord Spymaster,” she hears Maggie say.

“I know she's in here,” Lex thunders. “Where's that goddamned blacksmith?”

“I don't know what you're—”

“Get out of the way,” Leviticus snarls, and there's the sound of a brief scuffle, then a cry of pain and a thud, then silence.

Kara holds Lena close, the terror in the green eyes no doubt mirrored in her own.

“Who is that?” Kara whispers, looking, for the first time since Lena has known her, truly afraid.

Lena can't say anything. The fear freezes her in place, sews her mouth shut, and even if she could speak she wouldn't know what to say.

“Who is that?” Kara says again, louder, because the sound of footsteps is growing closer.

And then rough hands are tearing her away from Kara and she lashes out, screaming, against her brother.

“You killed her! You killed her!”

A blow lands on her stomach and she gasps, doubling over. She can hear Kara shouting and armor rattling and through a haze of pain sees the blonde woman being held back by several guards, fighting to get to her.

“Don't make a fool of yourself, Lena,” Lex growls in her ear, his fingers latching onto her shoulders like talons.

“You killed her,” is all she can say, but he twists her arm behind her back and she cries out, choking on the pain.

“So what if I did?”

“You cut out her tongue!” she gasps, blinking the stars out of her eyes. Kara is somewhere to her left, still yelling, but all she can see is her brother's face, twisted with malice.

“Is that what gave it away? How annoying,” he says in a bored tone, stale breath hitting her face. “Now listen, little sister. This...unfortunate incident was going to happen no matter what you did. It just so happens that I have the perfect person to pin it on.” He turns on Kara, his eyes flashing. “The girl who stole the queen's heart. Desperate to be with her, she killed the Lady Queen when she tried to protect her daughter. How tragic.”

“Stop him!” Lena commands, looking to the guards, but Lex waves her words away.

“They don't work for you,” he grins maliciously, “they work for me. Take her.”

Someone pulls a cloth over her head and her world goes dark, her panicked breath filling the space in seconds.

* * *

When the roar of water reaches her ears, she begins to struggle harder, but a quick blow from an armored fist subdues her.

 _He means to kill me,_ she thinks numbly, wondering how she could have missed this.

_It was right in front of me this entire time._

Lex rips off the hood and stands in front of her as she blinks in the sunlight, her muscles tensing futilely against the guards. He draws his dagger from his side and presses it to her neck, backing her up against the railing and leaving the guards behind.

“You're such a little brat, aren't you?” He says in a soft voice that she can barely hear over the sound of the waterfall. She can see the docks out of the corner of her eye and the end of the bridge to the left, but her brother presses the knife harder and it bites her skin.

Something warm drips down her neck and she braces her hands against the railing, closing her eyes.

“So difficult, so headstrong. Do you know how hard I've had to work, just to keep you from ruining my plans?”

“What plans?” she says with difficulty, her Adam's apple hitting the knife as she swallows.

“To take over. To rebuild what Camelot used to be. Our father...he was short-sighted. And weak, and stupid. But I fixed that, didn't I? Mother was the only one who knew and she was going to tell you, but I fixed that too.”

Her hand slips, slick with sweat and river mist, and she blinks away her anger, staying stubbornly silent.

“And you've finally arrived at the truth. Too bad it took your entire life,” he taunts, bending her backward over the metal railing. “I killed your precious father. He got it in his head that I was trying to take over, tried to find the truth. You'll meet the same end as he did.”

Looking into his eyes, she sees nothing but green and black and she whispers the word through numb lips, feeling the spray of water at her back. “Why?”

 _It's Lex,_ her brain is screaming at her. _This is your brother. He protected you, he would never let anything bad happen to you._

_He raised you._

The sensation of blood dripping down her skin reminds her of how wrong she was.

“Time to say goodbye, dear sister,” Lex sneers, putting both hands on Lena's shoulders.

 _I'm sorry, Kara,_ she thinks, but right as he starts to push, something yanks him back and they tumble to the ground, the knife slipping from his grasp and clattering against the stone.

An arm sheathed in chain mail cuts across her view and there is Alexandra, her short hair blowing in the breeze.

“Maggie said you might need my help,” she says grimly, pulling Lena to her feet. Behind her, Lex groans and rolls onto his knees, holding his head. There are more guards around them all fighting among themselves and Lena can't tell who is fighting for her and who is fighting for her brother.

“Margaret is a smart woman,” Lena pants, her heart soaring when she sees blonde hair flying towards the entrance to the bridge. “As is your sister.”

“Not smart enough to stay away from you,” Alex counters, then hands her a broadsword and leaps back into the fray.

The weapon is heavy and she raises it with both hands, the tip resting on her brother's chest.

“Up, Leviticus,” she commands, a steely look in her eye.

“And what are you planning to do with that thing?” he taunts, standing slowly and brushing off his clothes with a distinguished air. “Run me through? You don't have it in you.”

“You'll spend the rest of your life in prison,” Lena says coldly, “surrounded by people you stole away from their families.”

Their parts are reversed now. Lex has his back to the edge of the bridge, Lena's sword beginning to cut through his shirt, and a small red stain blooms over his sternum.

“No, I don't think I will,” he says, unbothered, and before she can blink he grabs the blade with his bare hand.

He howls as the steel cuts through his palm but yanks it forward, pulling Lena with it. She loses her balance and they wrestle with the sword, fear blossoming in her chest as she loses her grip on the handle.

Green eyes burning with hatred glare at her from a few inches away as they struggle to gain the advantage, first her, then Lex fighting with their back to the water. He has the advantage of training but she's been spending hours running through the streets with Kara, gaining sure footing on the docks and hammering out hunks of melted steel at the forge while Kara watches from a corner.

All it takes is a second, though, and when she hits the railing, hard, and gasps for breath, he goes for the kill.

With a triumphant cry, Lex plants his feet and gives her a violent shove but his victory is short-lived. She grabs his injured hand as he falls and he curls into it, stumbling forward, and they both tumble over the railing.

Right before she hits the water she closes her eyes and thinks of Kara.

* * *

Light. That's the first thing she registers when she wakes. It presses against her eyelids and makes her want to fall back asleep, but then her body starts to come alive and she can't shut it off.

“...could have been killed, you know,” someone is saying.

“I know.”

“And a lady's maid besides!”

“I know.”

“And the commander of the army, your sister, do you have any idea the trouble you've caused?”

“I know...”

Swallowing a laugh, Lena cracks open a bleary eye to see Catherine standing by her bed and shaking a finger at Kara, who looks thoroughly embarrassed.

“If it's any consolation, she didn't throw me into the river,” Lena croaks, her throat hoarse.

Both women turn around abruptly, Kara hurrying to grab her hand and Catherine staring at her with a mix of love and anger.

“Hey, pretty lady,” Kara says, and they both smile.

“Hey,” she whispers back. “Is everyone alright?”

“No one is dead, if that's what you mean,” Kara assures her. “Alex saw you fall and she jumped in after you, the idiot. Dragged you to shore then sent guards in after Lex. He's currently in the dungeons trying to talk his way out but Alex is standing outside his cell herself.”

Catherine opens her mouth to speak then snaps it shut, furiously rubbing at her eyes. “You stupid, stupid girl,” she starts angrily, her chin quivering. “You could have gotten yourself killed. This is why I tell you to stay in the castle.”

Grinning at her adviser, Lena raises herself on the pillows and looks into the face of the woman who treated her like a daughter.

“I love you, too, Catherine,” she says simply, and the older woman is at a loss for words.

It doesn't last long, because a moment later she's berating Lena for just about everything she's ever done, telling her that if it were up to her she'd spend the rest of her life chained to a desk.

“And when that deer almost ran over you in the forest?”

“I was ten, and it did not _run over me_.”

“I told you not to go hunting that day, I said, Lena, it's best if you leave the hunting to the men.”

“I didn't agree with you.”

“No, you never agree with me. What about when you almost killed your pet rabbit in that snowdrift? What's the point of having an _adviser_ if you never take their _advice?!”_

As Catherine speaks, Lena becomes aware of Kara's steady gaze on her cheek and she turns to the side to see blue eyes swimming in tears.

“Lady Catherine,” she interrupts, earning her a huff from the adviser, “I would love to hear about my mistakes, past, present, and future, but perhaps at a later time when I am not so tired.”

With a disgruntled air, Catherine draws herself up to her full height. “Don't think you're getting out of a lecture just because you nearly drowned,” she grumbles.

“I wouldn't dream of it,” Lena says innocently, adding a sweet smile for effect.

“Fine.” Giving her a last look, Catherine straightens her hair. “Next time, see if I care when you almost die,” she says angrily, then storms out of the room.

Kara stares after her incredulously. “You castle people really have a knack for never saying what you mean.”

Laughing at the astonished look on Kara's face, Lena fights the urge to kiss it away and shrugs. “You never say what you mean in politics if you want to get anything done. It's easier that way.”

“If you hammer steel the wrong way with the hope of forming a horseshoe, I promise it doesn't magically bend the way you want it.”

“Well, not all of us are as straightforward as you,” Lena chimes, patting the bed next to her.

Clambering onto the bed, Kara hesitates for a moment then buries herself in the covers, letting out a contented yawn.

“If I had known you had such a nice bed, we would never have slept on my stupid mattress,” she comments, stretching until she takes up more than half the space.

“I like that stupid mattress!” Lena protests, lying down and snuggling into Kara's side. “I'd like any bed if you were in it.”

“Is that so,” Kara says with a wicked grin. She leans down for a kiss, her eyes slipping closed, but Lena stops her. “What's wrong?”

After a pause, Lena musters up the courage to meet her eyes. “Did you mean what you said?”

“About the mattress?” Kara asks, confused.

“No, before. When...”

“Oh, you mean when I told you I loved you,” Kara finishes with a smirk. “What do you think?”

“I think you're being purposefully obtuse and it's really quite bothersome,” Lena mutters as Kara nuzzles her neck.

“And I think you're being purposefully self-deprecating and perhaps you might consider that even one such as you is worthy of the love of me, a royal blacksmith,” Kara murmurs playfully, copying Lena's way of speaking.

“Kara! I'm serious,” Lena giggles, pushing her away again when she feels teeth nibbling on her ear. “I'm serious.”

“Of course I love you,” Kara says easily, stealing the breath from her lungs with a smile as bright as the sun. “Now shush,” she says cheekily, rolling on top of Lena. “My first task as royal blacksmith is a delicate one, and I don't want anything messing up my chances with the queen.”

Her lips find Lena's and hover there, waiting for her to make the first move.

Lena doesn't hesitate. Wrapping her arms around Kara's neck, she pulls them together and the fire in her chest burns brighter, roaring flames that fill her entire body and finally quiet the thoughts in her head.


End file.
